There is a enzyme (an alcohol dehydrogenase) in the eye which is responsible for turning retinol ; an alcohol, into retinal ; an aldehyde. This enzyme also works on other alcohols, and with methanol gives methanal, a very toxiccompound. As little as 10 grams of methanol can cause blindness....

There is however a treatment if you catch the poisoning fast enough. Because the dehydrogenating enzyme also works with ethanol, you can prevent a build up of methanal by giving a large dose of ethanol to the patient. This uses up the enzyme in the eyes, reducing the amount of methanal it can produce. As the methanol is water soluble it's eventually excreted by the body, helped no doubt by the diuretic effect of ethanol.

You're then left with probably one of the worst hangovers ever experienced by anyone, ever!

Methanol (CH3OH)is an alcohol compound. Alcohols are carbon compounds where a hydroxy group (-OH) has been substituted for a hydrogen atom. Methanol is the simplest alcohol because it has only 1 carbon atom. Methonal is used as a polarsolvent and is completely miscible with water.

Methanol is produced conventionally through a process which takes methane and combines it with high pressure steam inside the methane steam reformer. There are actually six processing steps: feed gas purification, steam reforming, heat recovery (steam generation), compression, methanol synthesis, and distillation. Unfortunately, the MSR is a complex and intrinsicly unreliable piece of equipment. It is a tribute to those involved in the design of today's MSRs that they have managed to engineer them to be more reliable and less troublesome in service. Alternative processes and sources are being actively sought.

There are 18 methanol production plants in the United States with a total annual capacity of over 2.6 billion gallons per year. Worldwide, over 90 methanol plants have the capacity to produce over 11 billion gallons of methanol annually. The global methanol industry generates $12 billion in economic activity each year, while creating nearly 100,000 jobs.